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Ask any crisis consultant. These are accepted and proven strategies for managing a crisis and maintaining a competitive and authentic advantage:

Acknowledge the problem.

Take responsibility.

And take corrective actions.

In the case of Hillary Clinton’s stunning eight-point Iowa caucus loss at the hands of Barack Obama, they are wholly applicable.

But like so many cornered CEO’s, Clinton has played her defeat as something entirely different and thus dismayed her supporters and detractors, both. Supporters know she was trounced and want to know why. Detractors are delighted and only happy to dispense their own obituaries. Hillaryland’s well laid plans were singularly blown up by the upstart Illinois Senator, everyone knows, and so it’s left to her or others to tell us why.

What plays did she run in the wake of her worst campaigning day? Superficial Bear Hugs designed to co-opt Obama’s chosen message of Change. We are going to have change and that change will be a Democratic president in the White House in 2009…We have presented the case for change…America needs a new beginning. As well, she announced her plans to escalate attacks on Obama, what will amount to unrelenting Call Outs and Mirrors on the new leader.

But her drubbing is too obvious to triangulate. It is a political pig that no amount of lipstick will make beautiful.

What play should she have run? A Disco. Coined in the 1980s in any Ivy League debate tournament, the Disco is a rhetorical dance that seeks to stop the bleeding by taking a player one step back so that it may move two steps forward. Albeit high risk, it is a strategy of contrition or, sometimes, apology, and it is often mistaken by CEOs and politicos alike as an admission of weakness or culpability. You want me to admit what!? Are you out of your mind?!

But leaders – and often their lawyers – are famous for underestimating the public’s willingness to forgive. And in the case of Candidate Clinton who, by most accounts, is an impersonal political brand, we have a player who badly needs to show us and share with us authentic flaws and imperfect judgments – and thus to be forgiven for them.

Clinton’s concession speech was no concession and, thus, no Disco. Instead of hurriedly filling an empty room with cheering shills, she missed her chance to give us McCain-style straight talk. This was a great day for Democrats. We’re going to take this enthusiasm and go straight to New Hampshire, she bravely opined.

Arthur Page, a pioneer of prudent PR, taught us that no one person or organization in public life exists or profits without the tacit blessing of the public. They operate, in other words, with the public’s permission because, well, it’s their lawn we’re tromping on. So when candidates miscalculate, it’s often in their best interests, however counter-intuitive, to say so and make it right.

That, dear debaters, is a Disco. You take one step back to take two steps forward. You say you blew it, you take the hit, and you move forward again, credibly and with certain improved measures of understanding and authenticity.

But like the current President, understanding and authenticity are not things that Hillary Clinton apparently seeks. She’d no sooner explain what went wrong on the subject of Iowa than George W. Bush would on the subject of Iraq.

Hillary missed the moment to share her grief and ideas for recovery. Instead of a well-run Disco, she ran a desperate and implausible Bear Hug on the new candidate of inevitability (I’m the candidate of change, darnit). And, apparently, she plans to invest her next week’s effort in the politics of personal destruction and strategies of de-positioning (We’ll find Obama’s skeletons, I promise).

Totally agree Alan. This was her moment to shine, to take the hit, and to teach the ABC (Anybody But Clinton) Dems she has an ounce of humility and can be gracious and human. This was her chance to disarm the ABC'ers and she failed.

Posted By: JakeZ | January 04, 2008 at 08:35 PM

Very sound take, but you are asking the Clinton machine to renounce 15 years of muscle memory literally overnight. The Disco isn't in Hillary's DNA. All politics is warfare, every exchange is aggressive. She blew Iowa not only because she projected a dreadful, forbidding aura of entitlement + isolation + manufacture, but because she kept talking about how "I've been taking it for fifteen years, and I'm still standing..." doesn't anyone in the HRC camp understand that voters are as sick of trench warfare as they are of the current administration? I don't think introspection, apology, or even authenticity are in stock at Camp Clinton. We're going to see a pretty ugly weekend, and it's not going to help Hillary's cause.

Posted By: TomF | January 04, 2008 at 02:06 PM

Excellent analysis. However, I think there is one variable that may have made the disco impossible: time. In order for the disco to work, the public's anger must sink in first, then the individual must be authentically contrite. THEN, there must be a small passage of time to demonstrate that the person truly learned from their mistake and has truly started down a new path. With contrition, time heals all wounds. But I'm not sure that even with a sincere, "disco," that 5 days would be long enough.